Medical Mysteries & Thrilling Histories

Updated June 7, 2026
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Dr. Mütter's Marvels A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine
Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe
Ebook
A mesmerizing biography of the brilliant and eccentric medical innovator who revolutionized American surgery and founded the country's most famous museum of medical oddities   Imagine undergoing an operation without anesthesia performed by a surgeon who refuses to sterilize...
The lady's handbook for her mysterious illness
Ramey, Sarah
Paper Book
'A visceral, scathing, erudite read that digs deep into how modern medicine continues to fail women and what can be done about it' Booklist The darkly funny memoir of Sarah Ramey's years-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors thought was all in her head -...
The facemaker : a visionary surgeon's battle to mend the disfigured soldiers of World War I
Fitzharris, Lindsey
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize | Named a best book of the year by The Guardian "Enthralling. Harrowing. Heartbreaking. And utterly redemptive. Lindsey Fitzharris hit this one out of the park." --Erik Larson, author of...
Replaceable you : adventures in human anatomy
Roach, Mary
Paper Book
The body is the most complex machine in the world, but what happens when the parts start to fail? Meet the scientists facing the challenge... AN AMAZON AND TIME BOOK OF THE YEAR  Our bodies regenerate at a remarkable rate - our skin replaces itself every month, our...
The invisible kingdom : reimagining chronic illness
O'Rourke, Meghan
Paper Book
Drawing on her own medical experience as well as fifteen years of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O'Rourke's incisive new work speaks to an urgent subject: the epidemic scale of autoimmune disease in America (even greater with the advent of 'Long Covid')...
Empire of pain : the secret history of the Sackler dynasty
Keefe, Patrick Radden
Paper Book
The inspiration behind the Netflix TV series Painkillers, starring Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick.Amazon's Top 20 Best Books of the Year'This is no dense medical tome, but a page-turner with a villainous family to rival the Roys in Succession, and one where every chapter ends with the perfect...
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Skloot, Rebecca
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The story of modern medicine and bioethics--and, indeed, race relations--is refracted beautifully, and movingly."--Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE * ONE OF THE "MOST...
The hot zone
Preston, Richard
Paper Book
The bestselling landmark account of the first emergence of the Ebola virus. Now a mini-series drama starring Julianna Margulies, Topher Grace, Liam Cunningham, James D'Arcy, and Noah Emmerich on National Geographic. A highly infectious, deadly virus from...
The emperor of all maladies : a biography of cancer
Mukherjee, Siddhartha
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2011 WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2011 'Profound, eloquent and searching' SUNDAY TIMES 'Essential reading' INDEPENDENT 'Masterly' GUARDIAN 'Extraordinary' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW In...
Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Roach, Mary
Ebook
An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For 2,000 years, cadavers-some willingly, some unwittingly-have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space...
Hidden Valley Road : inside the mind of an American family
Kolker, Robert
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY * The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in...
Five days at Memorial : life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital
Fink, Sheri
Paper Book
One of the New York Times's Best Ten Books of the Year Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Winner of the 2014 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,...
Bad blood : secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup
Carreyrou, John
Paper Book
'I couldn't put down this thriller' - Bill Gates Winner of the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. The shocking true story of the breathtaking rise and collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup founded by Elizabeth...
The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales
Sacks, Oliver
Paper Book
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE NBC SERIES BRILLIANT MINDS * A Contemporary Classics hardcover edition of Dr. Sacks's most extraordinary book, in which the "poet laureate of medicine" (The New York Times) recounts fascinating case histories of patients with neurological disorders. ...
The spirit catches you and you fall down : a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures
Fadiman, Anne
Paper Book
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionWhen three-month-old Lia Lee Arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao...
Smoke gets in your eyes, & other lessons from the crematory
Doughty, Caitlin
Paper Book
Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty--a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre--took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life's work. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters (both...
The code breaker : Jennifer Doudna, gene editing, and the future of the human race
Isaacson, Walter
Paper Book
The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how the pioneering scientist Jennifer Doudna, along with her colleagues and rivals, launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and enhance our children.<...
Brain on fire : my month of madness
Cahalan, Susannah.
Paper Book
Brain on Fire is the stunning debut from journalist and author Susannah Cahalan, recounting the real-life horror story of how a sudden and mysterious illness put her on descent into a madness for which there seemed to be no cure. 'My first serious blackout marked the line between sanity and insanity...
I contain multitudes : the microbes within us and a grander view of life
Yong, Ed
Paper Book
New York Times Bestseller New York Times Notable Book of 2016 * NPR Great Read of 2016 * Named a Best Book of 2016 by The Economist, Smithsonian, NPR's Science Friday, MPR, Minnesota Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews,...
Gulp
Roach, Mary.
Ebook
In her fantastically disgusting international bestseller, Mary Roach dives into the strange wet miracles of science that operate inside us after every meal SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY WINTON PRIZE 2014 'Almost every page made me laugh out loud.'...
The cure for women : Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the challenge to Victorian medicine that changed women's lives forever
Reeder, Lydia
Paper Book
"Valiant and timely .... reintroduces its subject as a hero for this moment." ―The New York Times How Victorian male doctors used false science to argue that women were unfit for anything but motherhood--and the brilliant doctor who defied them ...
The gene : an intimate history
Mukherjee, Siddhartha
Paper Book
The #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller The basis for the PBS Ken Burns Documentary The Gene: An Intimate History From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies--a fascinating history of the gene and "a magisterial account of...
And the band played on : politics, people, and the AIDS epidemic
Shilts, Randy.
Paper Book
By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this...
The poisoner's handbook : murder and the birth of forensic medicine in Jazz Age New York
Blum, Deborah
Paper Book
Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum follows New York City's first forensic scientists to discover a fascinating Jazz Age story of chemistry and detection, poison and murder. Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of...
The ghost map : the story of London's most terrifying epidemic--and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world
Johnson, Steven
Paper Book
A thrilling account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London and a brilliant exploration of how Dr John Snow's solution revolutionised the way people think about disease, cities, science and the modern world. This is an endlessly fascinating and compelling account of the summer of 1854,...
Forensics : what bugs, burns, prints, DNA, and more tell us about crime
McDermid, Val
Paper Book
Val McDermid is one of the finest crime writers we have, whose novels have captivated millions of readers worldwide with their riveting narratives of characters who solve complex crimes and confront unimaginable evil. In the course of researching her bestselling novels McDermid has become...
The butchering art : Joseph Lister's quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine
Fitzharris, Lindsey
Paper Book
Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Short-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize A Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers Weekly A Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian "Warning: She...
The great influenza : the epic story of the deadliest plague in history
Barry, John M.
Paper Book
#1 New York Times bestseller "Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history."--Bill Gates "Monumental... an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."--Chicago Tribune The...
The good nurse : a true story of medicine, madness, and murder
Graeber, Charles.
Paper Book
The mesmerizing basis of the movie starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain⁠--a "stunning book...that should and does bring to mind In Cold Blood"--takes you inside the mind of America's most prolific serial killer, whose 16-year long "nursing" career left as many as 400 dead....
The mind electric : stories of the strangeness and wonder of our brains
Anand, Pria
Paper Book
A history of the world in six plagues : how contagion, class, and captivity shaped us, from Cholera to COVID-19
Bonhomme, Edna
Paper Book
Unshrunk : how the mental health industry took over my life -- and my fight to get it back
Delano, Laura
Paper Book
Bellevue : three centuries of medicine and mayhem at America's most storied hospital
Oshinsky, David M.
Ebook
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a riveting history of New York's iconic public hospital that charts the turbulent rise of American medicine. Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of...
Complications : a surgeon's notes on an imperfect science
Gawande, Atul.
Paper Book
2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction "No one writes about medicine as a human subject as well as Atul Gawande. His stories about becoming a surgeon are scary, funny, absorbing....Complications is a uniquely soulful book about the science of mending bodies." --...
The Black angels : the untold story of the nurses who helped cure tuberculosis
Smilios, Maria
Paper Book
Black Angels tells the true story of 300 black nurses who changed the course of history, beginning in 1929 when white nurses staged a walk out at Staten Island's 2000-bed TB sanatorium, threatening New York with a public health catastrophe. City health officials made a radical decision to...
Twelve patients : life and death at Bellevue Hospital
Manheimer, Eric.
Paper Book
In the spirit of Oliver Sacks and the inspiration for the NBC drama New Amsterdam, this memoir from a Medical Director of Bellevue Hospital looks poignantly at patients' lives, highlighting the complex mind-body connection. "As intensely involving as any scripted...
Do no harm : stories of life, death and brain surgery
Marsh, Henry
Paper Book
'A SUPERB ACHIEVEMENT' IAN MCEWAN * * * * * What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut through the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you...
Awakenings
Sacks, Oliver
Paper Book
'The story of a disease that plunged its victims into a prison of viscous time, and the drug that catapulted them out of it' - Guardian Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries,...
A fatal inheritance : how a family misfortune revealed a deadly medical mystery
Ingrassia, Lawrence
Paper Book
Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction Named a best book of the year by Amazon, NPR, and Kirkus Weaving his own moving family story with a sweeping history of cancer research, Lawrence Ingrassia delivers an intimate,...
How to survive a plague : the story of how activists and scientists tamed AIDS
France, David
Paper Book
One of Entertainment Weekly's Top 10 Nonfiction Books of the Decade A definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic, here is the incredible story of the grassroots activists whose work turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable...
Every patient tells a story : medical mysteries and the art of diagnosis
Sanders, Lisa
Paper Book
This work presents an unflinching look inside the detective story that marks nearly every illness - the diagnosis - revealing the combination of uncertainty and intrigue that doctors face when confronting patients who are sick or dying.
Death's acre : inside the legendary 'body farm'
Bass, Bill.
Paper Book
On a wooded hillside in Tennessee blowflies, bacteria and buzzards fest on human flesh, unhindered by coffins or mausoleums. They're buried in shallow graves; submerged in tanks of water; concealed under slabs of concrete; locked in the boots and backseats of rusting cars. They are serving the...
The occasional human sacrifice : medical experimentation and the price of saying no
Elliott, Carl
Paper Book
The Occasional Human Sacrifice is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle that whistleblowers face, and why it is not the kind of struggle that most people imagine. Carl Elliott is a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who was trained in medicine as well as philosophy. For...
Smile : the story of a face
Ruhl, Sarah
Paper Book
* A People Best Book of the Year * Time and The Washington Post's Most Anticipated List * Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence * From the MacArthur genius, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and playwright, this "captivating, insightful...
The mystery of the exploding teeth : and other curiosities from the history of medicine
Morris, Thomas
Ebook
The family that couldn't sleep : unravelling a Venetian medical mystery
Max, D. T.
Paper Book
In 1765, doctors in Venice were stumped by the death of a man who suffered from chronic insomnia. Over the next two centuries, this rare, inherited disease continued to baffle the experts as it struck the family at random, passing from generation to generation like a deadly dynastic curse.
The sleeping beauties and other stories of the social life of illness
O'Sullivan, Suzanne
Paper Book
'It is in every sense, mind-blowing.' TelegraphIn Sweden, refugee children fall asleep for months and years at a time. In upstate New York, high school students develop contagious seizures. In the US Embassy in Cuba, employees complain of headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises in the...
The red market : on the trail of the world's organ brokers, bone thieves, blood farmers, and child traffickers
Carney, Scott M.
Paper Book
"An unforgettable nonfiction thriller, expertly reported....A tremendously revealing and twisted ride, where life and death are now mere cold cash commodities." --Michael Largo, author of Final Exits Award-winning investigative journalist and contributing Wired...
Sick : a memoir
Khakpour, Porochista
Paper Book
A Best Book of the Year: Real Simple, Entropy, Mental Floss, Bitch Media, The Paris Reivew, and LitHub. Time Magazine's Best Memoirs of 2018 * Boston Globe's 25 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018  *  Buzzfeed's 33 Most Exciting New Books  * GQ Best...
The perfect predator : a scientist's race to save her husband from a deadly superbug: a memoir
Strathdee, Steffanie
Paper Book
A harrowing memoir of one woman's extraordinary effort to save her husband's life--and the discovery of a forgotten cure that has the potential to save millions more. Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in...
Brainstorm : detective stories from the world of neurology
O'Sullivan, Suzanne
Paper Book
From the Wellcome Prize-winning author of It's All in Your Head Brainstorm examines the stories of people whose symptoms are so strange even their doctor struggles to know how to solve them. A man who sees cartoon characters running across the room; a teenager who...
Kill shot : a shadow industry, a deadly disease
Dearen, Jason
Paper Book
Two pharmacists sit in a Boston courtroom accused of murder. The weapon: the fungus Exserohilum rostratum. The death count: 100 and rising. Kill Shot is the story of their hubris and fraud, discovered by a team of medical detectives who raced against the clock to hunt the killers and the fungal...
Anaesthesia: the Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness
Cole-Adams, Kate
Ebook
Winner, 2017 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award You know how it is when you go under. The jab, the countdown, the-- --and then you wake. This book is about what happens in between. Until a hundred and seventy years ago many people chose death over the...
The tiger and the cage : a memoir of a body in crisis
Bolden, Emma
Paper Book
For readers of Susannah Cahalan's Brain on Fire and Porochista Khakpour's Sick, this exquisitely wrought debut memoir recounts a lifelong struggle with chronic pain and endometriosis, while speaking more broadly to anyone who's been told "it's all in your head" In...
Mapping the darkness : the visionary scientists who unlocked the mysteries of sleep
Miller, Kenneth
Paper Book
'Fascinating, magisterially researched, and brilliantly written.' Steve Silberman, author of Neurotribes Thirty-two days underground. No heat. No sunlight. 4 June 1938. Nathaniel Kleitman and his research student make their way down the seventy-one steps leading to the mouth of...
The puzzle solver : a scientist's desperate hunt to cure Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and save his son
White, Tracie
Paper Book
Based on a viral article, the gripping medical mystery story of Ron Davis, a world-class Stanford geneticist who has put his career on the line to find the cure for chronic fatigue syndrome, the disease killing his son.

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